“The slave was precious to his master because of the money he had cost him… Men's blood had some price in the days of slavery. They were worth at least as much as they could be sold for in the market…It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat, and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live. It is want that drags them to those markets where they await masters who will do them the kindness of buying them. It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him… what effective gain [has] the suppression of slavery brought [him ?] He is free, you say. Ah! That is his misfortune… These men, it is said, have no master—they have one, and the most terrible, the most imperious of masters, that is, need. It is this that reduces them to the most cruel dependence. They live only by hiring out their arms. They must therefore find someone to hire them, or die of hunger. Is that to be free?”
“The slave was precious to his master because of the money he had cost him… Men's blood had some price in the days of slavery. They were worth at least as much as they could be sold for in the market…It is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil whose fruits they will not eat, and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live. It is want that drags them to those markets where they await masters who will do them the kindness of buying them. It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him… what effective gain [has] the suppression of slavery brought [him ?] He is free, you say. Ah! That is his misfortune… These men, it is said, have no master—they have one, and the most terrible, the most imperious of masters, that is, need. It is this that reduces them to the most cruel dependence. They live only by hiring out their arms. They must therefore find someone to hire them, or die of hunger. Is that to be free?”
ReplyDelete-Simon Linguet, 1763